03/30/2011

"India along with many other countries from the Middle East and Indonesia opposed the grant of the domain in the first place, and we would proceed to block the whole domain, as it goes against the IT Act and Indian laws," said a senior official at the ministry of IT, according to the Economic Times. "Though some people have said that segregation is better, and some countries allow it. But for other nations transmission and direct distribution of such content goes against their moral and culture."

03/29/2011

In litigation that started a decade ago, female Wal-Mart employees are charging that they've been overlooked when it comes to hiring and promotion at the nation's largest private-sector employer. For its part, the company argues that it has strong anti-discrimination policies in place at the corporate level, and that hiring and promotion are decentralized. The case, Dukes vs. Walmart, could be used to set a new precedent for such litigation, which is one of the reasons many business groups have chimed in on the side of Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has to like its chances. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has generally been pro-business and hostile to the cause of workers. In 2009, it threw out on a minor technicality the compelling case of Lilly Ledbetter, who had fought Goodyear Tire over sexual harassment and discrimination for a decade. Despite the presence of three women on the court for the first time in history, the plaintiffs shouldn't expect a sympathetic hearing.

03/28/2011

I’m sure you are too busy at the disaster unit’s headquarters to look at emails. But I’d like to pass on the current situation at the plants.

We at the plants have been working on restoration work without sleep or rest since the earthquake. About two weeks have passed since the quake, and things have gotten better on the first floor. We wish the cooling efforts will continue to work.

As you know, most of the workers on the first and second floors are local residents and victims of the quake. There are many workers whose houses were washed away.

I myself have had to stay in the disaster measurement headquarters the entire time ever since the earthquake occurred, and have been fighting alongside my colleagues without any sleep or rest. Personally, my entire hometown, Namie-machi, which is located along the coast, was washed away by the tsunami. My parents were washed away by the tsunami and I still don’t know where they are. Normally I would rush to their house as soon as I could. But I can’t even enter the area because it is under an evacuation order. The Self-Defense Forces are not conducting a search there. I’m engaged in extremely tough work under this kind of mental condition…I can’t take this any more!

The quake is a natural disaster. But Tepco should be blamed for contamination caused by the radioactive materials released from the nuclear plants.

It seems to me local residents’ feelings are heightened so much that the unspoken sentiment is that the quake occurred because of Tepco.

Everyone is away from their hometown and does not know when they can return. We don’t know who to turn to and direct our concern and anger. This is the current reality.

As the new school year starts, local children will have to transfer to schools in their places of refuge. Everyone has lost everything—their home, their job, their school, their friends, their families. Who could stand this reality? I would beg you to share this reality with people inside and outside the company.

I’m not saying workers at the nuclear plants are bad! I’m not saying anyone is bad! But most workers in the plants are local residents. All of us, including myself, are victims of the disaster.

But we are all working hard to complete our tasks as Tepco employees, before thinking of ourselves as disaster victims.

Workers on the second floor in particular were having a tough time. They had to support colleagues on the first floor, who were engaged in restoration work, while ensuring the safety of their own plants. The scene is completely like a war zone.

All the employees are working to their limit, both mentally and physically. Please understand that.

The company may get rid of nuclear power to save the company, but we will fight until the end. I beg you to give us continuous support from the headquarters.

In trying to shield the documents from disclosure, the
Clearing House invoked a FOIA exemption that covers “trade
secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a
person and privileged or confidential.”

03/26/2011

In the days following the attack, the Japanese mass media tried to make a connection between his attack and video games, basing their conjuncture on a picture he drew in high school of character in role-playing game Tales of Destiny.

Lawyers and public interest groups have taken part in such lawsuits all over the US, commonly arguing that suing hundreds or thousands of alleged BitTorrent users in a single lawsuit should not be allowed. Three reasons are usually given. First, the defendants in such cases are “improperly joined,” since they did not act together to break the law in the way that, for instance, an organized criminal syndicate might do. Each case should instead be filed individually, for $350 apiece in filing fees.

Second, most of the people sued in most of these cases live outside the district of the federal court in which they are being sued. Copyright holders should have known this, goes the argument, because geolocation tools make it simple to approximate someone's location with just an IP address. All of these people should be dismissed from the case.

Finally, defendants have a First Amendment right to anonymous speech. This right can obviously be breached when the law has been broken, but groups like the American Civil Liberties Union don't believe that turning in a list of IP addresses to a court is good enough evidence to invade someone's privacy, especially when cases concern pornographic films (as many do).

On Tuesday, Judge Beryl Howell rejected all three claims—at least for now.

For the purposes of this ruling, the judge combined three such mass lawsuits currently pending before the court. As for improper joinder, the judge ruled that suing hundreds or thousands of anonymous defendants at once was permissible, since the claims against them are all “logically related.” The judge also decided that forcing copyright holders to file a separate suit against each individual would cost too much money, something that would “further limit their ability to protect their legal rights.” Later in the case, defendants might well each present different defenses and different factual scenarios that would require them to be separated, but the judge said that they could be joined in the initial discovery phase.

As for personal jurisdiction, the judge said that jurisdiction remains unclear. Geolocation only reveals “where a defendant is ‘likely’ to be located. Given that these lookup tools are not completely accurate, this does not resolve the question of whether personal jurisdiction would be proper.” Once defendants are actually identified by their ISP, "they will then have the opportunity to file appropriate motions" if they are outside the court's jurisdiction.

On First Amendment concerns, the judge did agree that file-sharers are “engaged in expressive activity, on some level,” but concluded that this was fairly minimal and that the copyright holders had compelling reasons to seek out the defendants' identities.

03/25/2011

The suit, filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, says producers never informed Michaels of the scenery or the hazards it presented. "Quite the opposite, Michaels specifically asked for instructions regarding how to exit after his performance and was just told to walk off the rear of the stage -- in what was ultimately the danger zone," the legal papers say.

Weinglass, who practiced in Los Angeles for two decades before moving to New York, developed a reputation as a firebrand during the Chicago 7 conspiracy case against anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The defendants included Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Although Weinglass was considered less boisterous than co-counsel William Kunstler, he was nonetheless cited for contempt 14 times during the five-month trial, which resulted in acquittals.

He went on to defend other notorious clients, including Jane Fonda, Symbionese Liberation Army members William and Emily Harris, Angela Davis, Kathy Boudin and Mumia Abu-Jamal. He also represented former President Carter's daughter, Amy, who in 1987 was charged with disorderly conduct after an anti-CIA demonstration at the University of Massachusetts.

Until days before his death, Weinglass was drafting briefs on behalf of the so-called Cuban Five — five Cuban intelligence agents who were convicted in 2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of the government of then-President Fidel Castro.